Ermita officials start serving 6-month preventive suspension

OIC DILG Cebu City Director Joyevelyn Calvo (at the right) is implementing the preventive suspension order. | Photo by Jose Santino Bunachita

CEBU CITY—The signing of documents has been withheld in a village in Cebu City following the suspension of all its officials pending investigation on the allegation that they didn’t cooperate during a raid on a “shabu tiangge.”

Emma Joyevelyn Calvo, acting Department of Interior and Local Government director (DILG) for Cebu City, said signing of documents would only resume once President Duterte had appointed a caretaker for Barangay Ermita.

Calvo went to the barangay hall in Ermita about 9:40 a.m. on Tuesday to serve the six-month preventive suspension ordered by the Office of the Ombudsman to village chair Felicisimo “Imok” Rupinta and all seven barangay councilors.

Calvo, who was accompanied by policemen, waited for Rupinta who was supervising the clearing operations of some stalls on Progreso Street near Carbon Market.

About 25 minutes later, Rupinta arrived and received the suspension order.

Aside from Rupinta, suspended were Barangay Councilors Marky Rizaldy Miral, Antonieto Flores, Ryan Jay Rosas, Alio Tamundo, Domingo Ando, Maria Buanghug and Wilbert Flores.

While he lamented that they were not afforded due process, Rupinta said he would heed the order and would use it as an opportunity to take a break and go on vacation.

“Now I can go on vacation. I haven’t gone on vacation. But before I leave, I will wait for the appointed caretaker so I could talk to her or him,” he said.

He said he was worried that the suspension of the barangay officials might affect the delivery of basic services in the barangay especially in terms of garbage collection and in their ongoing campaign to cleanse the village, particularly Sitio Bato, of illegal drugs.

Calvo said President Duterte had yet to appoint a caretaker for Ermita, an urban poor village which has been beset by problems of illegal drugs.

But she was confident that delivery of basic services in the village would not be affected despite the absence of a caretaker because the barangay employees would still go on with their functions.

The barangay secretary, she added, was still around to help run the village.
If problems arose, Calvo said the barangay secretary or employees could ask the help of the mayor’s office.

The preventive suspension stemmed from the complaint of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in Central Visayas (PDEA- 7) that the village officials didn’t cooperate with the agency during the drug operation conducted last Nov. 6 in a “shabu tiangge,” located just 500 meters away from the Barangay Hall of Ermita.

The raid yielded P800,000 worth of suspected shabu as well as the arrest of Richard Cañete, who was suspected to maintain the alleged “shabu tiangge.”

This was the first time that entire officials of a barangay had been suspended by the anti-graft office.

In an order dated Jan. 16, Deputy Ombudsman for the Visayas Paul Elmer Clemente temporarily stripped the barangay officials of their power until the administrative adjudication on the case was completed, “but not to exceed six months.”

He said the respondents’ continued stay in office might prejudice the case filed against them.

“There exists the possibility of an unhampered access and undue influence by respondents to any potential witness to the case by virtue of their respective positions and their proximity to the area where the anti-drug operation conducted by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in Central Visayas took place,” he said.